linux.gentoo.user

On Friday 14 March 2008, Enrico Weigelt wrote:
> Hi folks,
>
> is there a way for telling emerge that it should NOT install
> static (.a) libraries ?

I shan't answer your question as I ca never find the answer myself, but
I keep wanting to do this myself, then I remember why portage
installs .a by default

A long time ago I read a HUGE thread on b.g.o. about this, the eventual
conclusion is that after installation of a lib, a user might well want
to link those libs statically and if they are not there, portage will
barf big time and has no way to recover or even know what went wrong.
Then the poor user sits in mystery wondering which package to remerge
to get the .a

In short, the devs at the time reckoned it was a huge risk at the
expense of not much disk space (does seem reasonable). Ubuntu can get
away with this, the user gets what the packager feels like giving them,
our users have *much* more freedom.

What's your reasoning for wanting to do this?
--
Alan McKinnon
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com

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